As I listened to Elder Mark E. Petersen, I wished that all of the youth of the Church could hear what he was saying. Many of us talk over the heads of children; I believe he said something they could understand. He mentioned the affection that he and the twelve have for President McKay as well as his assurance of the prophetic calling of the President of the Church.

I felt that I should like to get up and shout, "Please include me in that, also." I am certain that everyone here would want to be included. If they were asked to voice their feeling, the roar of approval would have shaken this building, so glad would they have been to express their affection also.

Heber C. Kimball, a member of the First Presidency at one time, and the grandfather of Elder Spencer W. Kimball, had great prophetic vision. He voiced it occasionally, and once he said, (I am not quoting him verbatim but as I recall it) "There is a test coming; there will be a testing." What he was trying to imply, I suppose, was that we must not get smug, that the test would come, and each one of us would have an opportunity to find out if he would stand when the pressure was on, when seemingly the evidences were against us, when all hell would be raised up to defeat us. Would we stand the test? I am sure he meant to imply that every man would be tested before he would be accepted.

I submit that the modern testing which comes from the insidious boring-in of ideas which imitate truth, excuse deception, and discount both evil and its author, is a much more difficult one to encompass and to resist than the physical tests of the past. In the day when Brother Kimball spoke, there appeared to be more physical difficulties to encompass than those spiritual or mental. At that time we could protect our children. Life was simple. We could easily persuade them to see as we saw and do as we did, because a large part of communication was from parent to children. No one else had very much to do with them.

Now, however, the test is directed at the children. They are being deceived into believing that they can think and act with maturity long before they are mature. In this they are much deceived, and rebellious against parental restraint. They are ripe fruit for the plucking.

Today our test is with our families and the false ideals of the day. We need not succumb to it. Parents can protect their children if they will, but it takes time and effort; but parents are still the most potent and sure protection and defense, provided they are righteous parents, alert and informed.

I cannot believe, personally, that the Lord God compromises black and white into gray—if I might use a metaphor of color. If I read correctly, his constant admonition is to become white, to purify one's self, to become perfect. I think the Lord draws sharp lines and declares that whatever leads to evil is evil. It is the evil in us which leads us to want to compromise a little and to be earthy as well as earthly.

May I present two points of view: If my normal outlook is that it is expected that my child will have the experiences of marriage without its responsibilities during adolescence, and that handling cocktails successfully without becoming obnoxious to my fellows is manly, or that cigarettes with coffee during and after meals is desirable, or that a trip to a gambling palace in a neighboring state is a legitimate recreation, or that viewing vulgar or exciting floor shows is not sin so long as I take no physical active part, then I am not going to be alarmed at the advice some people give my adolescent children about their actions, nor am I going to be concerned with their television fare nor with what type of pictures appear in their favorite weekly magazines, especially those which glamorize drunken and debauching night life in flaming color. Since under these circumstances I have no real reason to elevate my life, believing that old-fashioned morality is outdated, I shall then class as great literature some works such as Boccaccio, Casanova, Lawrence, Fitzgerald, and others, to make certain that for a rounded-out life, my children should be exposed to the accounts of recreation of these loose and lewd men who happened to have unusual powers of sensual description.

And since my body is not sacred but a purely animal creation, an accident of some evolutionary urge without any particular pressure in any particular direction to bring me to what I am today, then I can laugh with great pleasure at jokes and sly references to its functions. If my children end up in need of psychiatric help when they discover the futility of life, I can also get cheap medical help by going to a moving picture in which an author of like mind and habit, combined with a director who understands, because this has been his experience also, portrays the agonies and frustrations of those whose mental equipment has broken down upon the indulgence in these evils, for an equally sadistic solution to the problem thus posed. Then I can take comfort from the thought that my children have had the same kind of experience and are not so abnormal after all.

Children echo the words and imitate the standards of the adults to whom they are exposed. If a child grows up in an environment where stealing hub caps and gasoline, or ganging up on innocents in the street, or breathing glue-fumes, is the normal expectation, it cannot be expected that his conception of moral integrity will make his word worth much or his actions trustworthy when he gets to be a mature adult. I can lull my conscience by thinking that his actions are the result of a disease which anyone knows, of course can strike anyone. Therefore he is not fundamentally accountable for what he does. He is to be pitied but not censured.

But if my understanding is to know my true place in the eternal purpose of God, that I am his son, that I may become like him, and that his commandments are to be kept, that happiness is found only by being in harmony with his laws, and further, that Satan is determined to keep me from either practicing or thinking about these elevating truths, I say, if this is my knowledge and my belief, then I am going to be not only concerned, but I am also going to take action to protect my children from the designs of evil men in the last days, as the 89th section portrays (see  D&C 89:4 I shall do my best to teach my child that he is a sacred person, that he is an eternal being of two parts, body and spirit, to be fused together in the resurrection, that this eternal joining will best be accomplished if each part has equal development, that the body must be trained and conditioned for eternal progress in its celestial abode as well as the spirit, that because it is of the earth it tends to become earthy as well as earthly, but that it can be made subject to the will of the spirit.

I shall give him enough of my time to guide him but not enough to overshadow him or to take away his agency, his practice in making decisions. But I shall make certain that he has the correct viewpoint of the malpractices of modern life and expose him to all that I can find that is good and true and right.

I shall show him the joy of righteous endeavor and the rewards of righteous thought and habit, and while in his formative years, I shall teach him to love truth and beauty and to abhor the sordid and the drab. I shall also protect him from evil influences that are beyond his understanding, but not beyond his imitating.

Above all, I shall do my best to teach him the basic difference between right and wrong and show him that his decisions must always be made on that basis rather than on the basis of convenience or advantage to himself. I shall teach him the wages of sin is death, that evil is sin which he is to resist with all his strength, that he is accountable and will have to answer for it. And I shall also teach him a true understanding of repentance and of the great sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that repentance will have meaning and purpose. I shall do my best to teach him the sacredness of life and of the family. He will be taught, too, the importance of the family relation in the eternal plan. Already he will have seen some practical examples of this in the conduct of my own life of which he has such a daily, intimate view.

I shall realize that I cannot deceive him if I will as to the kind of man I am, but I can fill him with the ideals of the kind of man I should be and desire him to become.

If I as a holder of the priesthood of the Son of God attempt to compromise by accepting some of the gray evils, saying they will do no harm because I am an adult and can control them, I have betrayed his generation which indeed must be taught to draw the sharp line if we are to survive.

Such I believe must be our course if we are to keep alive the testimony and the gospel in the next generation.

Let us with all our strength work to defeat the purposes of him who is the author of the first point of view, lest there be applied to our children the rebuke that Alma gave to Corianton when he reminded him of the great iniquity he brought upon the Zoramites for, said he, ". . . when they saw your conduct they would not believe my words"  Alma 39:11

But rather let us pledge our lives to truth and right and be alert to fulfil the vision and prophecy given to Nephi when he: ". . . beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory"  1 Ne. 14:14

I sustain the work of the Church, and I witness that it belongs to Jesus Christ, is acknowledged by him, and I witness also the fact that we have a living prophet, the living prophet of our Lord among us, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.